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As Richards likes to describe it, Wingless Angels make “marrow music.” As old as time itself, this is the Nyabinghi style—calling on the drum and voice to make music that cuts right to the bone, stripping away all but the essence, the raw and righteous spirit of the common people.

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Originally released: 1997 Keith Richards, after year upon year of chiseling away at his sound and songwriting within the Rolling Stones, is pretty much synonymous with songs that tell their stories through chordal riffs—tracks like “Satisfaction, “Jumping Jack Flash” and “Start Me Up” are as good as any if you’re looking for songs that define what Richards can do with a guitar.

Even Richards’ solo material follows the same path, too, with chords swirling around the drums, carving songs out of the air around them.

It is utter turmoil at the reception of the Four Seasons Hotel in Tokyo. Front desk manager Danilo Zucchetti, one of the most likable people I have ever met, is surrounded by three American couples vociferously complaining about last night's disturbance. Danilo looks positively desperate. What happened? It is quite simple: The Rolling Stones have booked into the hotel and their crazy guitarist has lived up to his image being the world's longest-serving rock'n'roller.

It may have taken him a while, but Keith Richards has finally released an album with a group of musicians he fell in love with twenty-six years ago. During a break from recording Goats Head Soup with the Rolling Stones in Jamaica in 1772, Richards first heard the mesmerizing chant-and-drum music made by Rastafarian mystics who live in Steertown, a small village in the hills above Ocho Rios. In 1995 he recorded a group of them in the living room of his home overlooking Ocho Rios Bay.

For the past 25 years, whenever Keith Richards wasn't churning out Rolling Stones guitar rifts, he would often relax in Jamaica playing impromptu music in the living room of his villa with an ad hoc group of Rastafarian musicians. Recently, Richards produced and played on "Wingless Angels", an album of Rastafarian nyabinghi drumming and chanting.

Wingless Angels, ''Wingless Angels'' (Island Jamaica). The drumming and singing of Jamaica's Nyabinghi ceremonies, part of reggae's roots, can sound like gospel hymns en route to Africa. Keith Richards found a Nyabinghi group including Justin Hinds, a ska hit-maker in the 1960's, and recorded it to sound even more otherworldly, adding Irish pennywhistle and his own guitar: not ethnomusicology but a fond, romanticized homage.- Jon Pareles

A Stone goes back to his choirboy roots Keith Richards tells Vivien Goldman about his other band, Jamaica's Wingless Angels

IT'S dusk on Keith Richards's verandah in the hills outside Ocho Rios, Jamaica. The grizzled face is half-hidden in the shadows. From inside the villa wafts the steady nyahbingi drumming of the Wingless Angels, five Rastafarians whose debut album has been produced by the off-duty Rolling Stone.

"To me there was such an incredible power of expression in the music," says Richards.

Bob Marley and Peter Tosh, partners in the group the Wailers and later solo superstars, were the imperial lions of reggae. Along with bandmate Bunny Wailer, they brought the music of Jamaica to a wider audience, establishing reggae as a genre of global reach and lasting import.

The story of the Wingless Angels CD begins in 1973, when the Rolling Stones decamped to Jamaica to record Goat's Head Soup.

Enamored with reggae music, Keith Richards became equally enthralled with the tranquillity of the island, so he bought a mansion there and set up house. Much to the ire of local officials, Richards and then-wife Anita Pallenberg began keeping company with a band of devout and dreadlocked Rastafarians, forging a 25-year friendship that culminates with Richards overseeing the release of this superb and very moving album.

October 23 [12:00 EDT] -- There's more to Keith Richards than the Rolling Stones.

The guitarist has a new album due out this week called "Wingless Angels," which features a style of roots reggae known as "nyabingi." The style combines African hand drumming with chanted hymns and spirituals.

Justin Hines, of the great reggae vocal group The Dominos, is a member of "Wingless Angels," which Richards recorded two years ago in the hills behind his home in Jamaica.

At the moment, Keith Richards is sprawled on a couch in a room deep within the bowels of Ericson Stadium, home of the Carolina Panthers. The room has been temporarily converted into a rock-and-roll laundromat -- a pair of Maytag washers and dryers roll with the Stones, ready to rinse out each night's sweat. The Maytag slogan could just as well be Richards's attitude about the group: "Needs No Repairs."